Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Lenovo's plans to purchase IBM's server business were potentially facing delays due to security worries. US security officials and members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) were scrutinizing whether Lenovo's bid to buy IBM's servers — which support Pentagon systems — could eventually prove to be a chink in the armor of national security if Lenovo maintained them. Sources said that "Chinese spies" may be able to use this link to compromise the Pentagon.

While Yang refused to comment on the report, the executive rejected the idea that Lenovo products were a threat to security. "If you look at our history, with domestic and overseas clients, there have never been any issues regarding security," he said.

This is not the first time Lenovo has fought off security-based scrutiny. When Lenovo purchased IBM's PC business in 2005, Lenovo PCs sent to the military were found to host "connections to China" that were unauthorized. This, in turn, led to a number of US governmental bodies declining to use the firm's technology.

The $2.3 billion sale of IBM's x86 server business was announced in January, and the sale of Google's handset business was also revealed in the same month, valued at $2.91 billion.

Charlie Osborne, a medical anthropologist who studied at the University of Kent, UK, is a journalist, freelance photographer and former teacher.
She has spent years travelling and working across Europe and the Middle East as a teacher, and has been involved in the running of businesses ranging from media and events to B2B sales. Charli...
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